Neurophysiologic monitoring has become an increasingly important adjunct to surgical procedures where neural tissue may be at risk. Spinal surgery, in particular, involves working close to delicate tissue in and surrounding the spine, which can be damaged in any number of ways. Various neurophysiological techniques have been attempted and developed to monitor delicate nerve tissue during surgery in attempts to reduce the risk inherent in spine surgery (and surgery in general). Because of the complex structure of the spine and nervous system, no single monitoring technique has been developed that may adequately assess the risk to nervous tissue in all situations and complex techniques are often utilized in conjunction with one or more other complex monitoring techniques.
One such technique is somatosensory evoked potential (SSEP) monitoring which may be quite effective at detecting changes in the health of the dorsal column tracts of the spinal cord. SSEP (and other types of neurophysiologic monitoring) involves complex analysis and specially-trained neurophysiologists are often called upon to perform the monitoring. Even though performed by specialists, interpreting complex waveforms in this fashion is nonetheless disadvantageously time consuming, adding to the duration of the operation and translating into increased health care costs. For example, most neurophysiology systems require that a neurophysiologist visually identify the morphology of the SSEP responses, manually mark waveform amplitudes and latencies, and track those amplitude and latency values over time. Even more costly is the fact that the neurophysiologist is required in addition to the actual surgeon performing the spinal operation. The present invention is directed at eliminating, or at least reducing the effects of, the above-described problems with the prior art.